Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom

My first honest reaction to Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom was a quiet delight - a jester named Jaxx, a kidnapped witch named Comedia, a villain called Big Nose, and an omniscient narrator who the game heavily implies is actual God tutoring you on mouse clicks mid-tutorial. That premise alone carries more personality than most mid-range titles bother to conjure. It is a small, weird, lovingly assembled thing, and for the right kind of player that counts for quite a lot. Structurally, this is a 3D brawler spread across eight acts, each opened by a hand-drawn animated short that lands somewhere between Saturday morning TV nostalgia and a budget Shrek knockoff - in the best possible way. Combat takes its cues from the Batman Arkham template: standard attacks, a counter triggered when a golden indicator floats above an enemy's head, a dodge, a hammer throw, and a super-move bar charged by collecting the red noses enemies drop on death. Defeated clowns yield noses, noses level up your super moves, and boss encounters at the end of each act require you to actually think about which of the three super move tiers to deploy. There is also a mask-swapping mechanic that shifts Jaxx between combat-focused, stealth, and puzzle-solving modes across levels, which is the most interesting system on paper. Whether it delivers in practice is a more complicated answer. The problems are real and consistent. Controls feel floaty across both combat and platforming - the kind of floaty where you misjudge a jump and genuinely cannot tell whether it was your fault or the engine's. Camera behavior in combat can obscure enemies entirely. A reported bug at launch could crash the game to desktop when no gamepad was connected, and a saving bug near the end of Act One wiped progress for some players. The collectibles, hidden baubles and treasure chests scattered through levels, are mechanically toothless - no meaningful reward for hunting them down means even the completionist crowd has little incentive. At roughly three to four hours on a clean run, there is not much padding, but there is also not much depth. The story bottoms out into a basic rescue plot when the Druid Orbs premise offered something more interesting. What holds it together is tone. The dialogue is genuinely funny in places - Jaxx's sarcasm, the fourth-wall-breaking narrator, the pop-art combat bubbles that flash "Whack!" and "Thud!" across the screen. The cel-shaded visuals borrow from Borderlands in broad strokes and carry their own warmth in the cutscene animation. Critics landed in the mid-range, finding it difficult to be fully negative about something so cheerfully self-aware, while also being unable to ignore how thin the moment-to-moment play feels after the first hour. The honest summary is that the comedy often outperforms the combat, and that gap grows more visible the longer you play. If you want a short, low-pressure brawler with a personality that punches above its technical weight, this does the job in an afternoon. If responsive platforming or tight combat is non-negotiable for you, manage expectations carefully before committing.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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